The call came:
a week, maybe two.
Come now.
Years in the making,
yet unannounced.
I flew over
the dividing sea
at night.
Not going for her…
she liked daytime tv.
I liked Caesar.
Going to perform
for them.
To be
what they needed to see.
Southbound train,
I looked up…
saw the coastline
where my love lives,
the one I could never leave.
Cried then.
Not for my sister.
For all the fucking carnage.
Thought I’d escaped.
Here it was anyway.
Here I was.
Hospital.
She didn’t know
she was dying.
I did.
Octavian became Augustus,
made tyranny look like democracy.
Played it well.
I summoned memories,
forced smiles,
held the veneer.
She drifted…
lucid, then vague, then back.
Hoped she’d be home
for Christmas.
It was October.
I wasn’t the one
to tell her.
So I played my part well.
Kissed her forehead.
Gone.
Hours performed,
couldn’t slip aside.
Augustus
to the end.
- UpsilonA